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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/27091210">To Reach Out And To Touch, To Feel</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/kahootqueen69/pseuds/kahootqueen69'>kahootqueen69</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>Terrortober 2020 [4]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>The Terror (TV 2018), The Terror - Dan Simmons</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Developing Relationship, Feelings, Fix-It, M/M, Somebody Lives/Not Everyone Dies, i guess??, midnight thoughts, terrortober2020</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-10-18</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-10-18</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-09 03:13:40</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>General Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>1,018</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/27091210</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/kahootqueen69/pseuds/kahootqueen69</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Alone, at night, James Fitzjames reflects on certain things.</p><p>Terrortober 2020 Day 18: <em>Hands</em></p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Captain Francis Crozier/Commander James Fitzjames</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>Terrortober 2020 [4]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/series/1956325</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>2</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>33</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>To Reach Out And To Touch, To Feel</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>Hhhnnggg I had like four different endings for this thing and I deemed them all too shit but I guess this is the best of them.</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Hands. They’re a curious thing. Made specifically for grabbing things, holding onto them; a simple, mind-numbing purpose. Made of flesh and bone, veins and muscle running underneath the skin to keep them working. Plain and simple, when you say it like that — <em>as God intended,</em> Sir John would have said.</p><p>But nowadays, James wasn’t so sure there was an Almighty Creator anymore. And surely, if there was, They would not have intended the purpose to be so simple, so plain. Of course, their design was, first and foremost, to serve as an extension of the body, to grab and hold and help the person to whom they belonged through the daily burdens of the life they lived. But there was also a beauty to them, to the many shapes and forms they came in.</p><p>There were small hands, tiny and soft like a new-born’s, exploring the world by touch and feeling; There were big hands, belonging to a worker’s and made for rough, hard work that required their strength; There were thin hands, belonging to young boys swift in their movements, with a featherlight and curious touch; There were broad hands, made for exploring and mapping, belonging to an equally curious mind; There were spindly hands, the result of time and the ownership of old ladies; There were fat hands, not devoid of any needs and well-looked after; There were so many different sorts of hands, all fitted to their holder’s style of life, their needs and desires, all made beautiful in their own, personal way — made beautiful, too, by ornaments; Rings with rich colours or a simple gold with an engravement; Even tattoos, in some cases.</p><p>But wat really made them most beautiful, to James, anyway, was the capability to <em>feel.</em> To feel… Everything; Apart or all at once.</p><p>He had felt the numbing cold of the Arctic, feeling nothing but exactly that, ridding him of all feeling but the cold and the prickling of the nerve-endings in the tips of his fingers; He had felt the sharp sting and faraway throbbing as a result of a hand’s blow against his jaw; He had felt the heat of a fire licking at his skin, finally warming his hands that had been so very cold for months on end, but the wrong — so very wrong — kind of warm; He had felt the comforting squeeze of a hand in his own as he lay near-dying on an uncomfortable, make-shift cot in a sun-bleached tent, bleeding out of too-old wounds and aching but for that one bittersweet gesture.</p><p>James had felt… nearly everything, in that short span of time — relatively short, anyway, for it had felt far longer than that when they were still there, stuck in that endless vision of white and cold, struggling and trying their hardest just to <em>be.</em></p><p>He thought all of this as he lay awake at night, feeling the softness of the sheets as his hands lay atop them, the cold of the room nipping at his fingers. What exactly had brought him to this train of thought, again? He couldn’t recall. Not that it mattered, anyway. Despite the maid’s best efforts to warm the room by stoking a fire for some hours before he’d retired to bed, the room was cold, as it always was, and he… He was lonely.</p><p>To touch had been so easy in the Arctic. To reach out and grab a man’s arm to steady yourself on the uneven ice, to curl up in one another’s sack to stay warm throughout the night and not suffer an icy fate, to embrace a brother in a time of need; It had all been so natural, back there. Why was it so hard to do the same, now, back in England? Why were things so different here, when they were, in fact, not so different at all? They were still the same men, were they not?</p><p>It was just a mere couple of steps down the hallway, he pondered, looking up at the adorned ceiling of his rooms. Perhaps his room was just as cold as James’, and perhaps he, as well as James, found sleep to be far from reach tonight, and if he, same as James, was in need of some company. It would be so simple to step out of bed and close that small distance — but then again, was the distance really so small? It was unfair, to say the least, that things so simple as that should be so far from reach.</p><p>He thought back to the way they’d huddled together in a sack, all pretence thrown out the window; Captain and Commander, curled up like two lovers in the night — what a sight that was. At least they’d been warm, after a while.</p><p>He hadn’t minded the way Francis pressed his hand over his heart; Possessively, like he was willing to fight off Death itself if it meant James would live another day. The way Francis had kept him close at all times during the night had been a comfort, the little warmth they had left seeping into their skin, even through the thick fabric of the slops they never took off. Francis had reached for him then, and he had reached back, as often and as far as he could, craving the comfort and warmth of him, the love he had given James, despite maybe not even knowing it himself.</p><p>Had he known? Had Francis known what it was, exactly, that he’d given James? Did he know, now, that James craved it still, and would he give it again, now, as James wanted to give him? That warmth that went far deeper than a sharing of it to simply keep living, to go on, mindlessly, but to really <em>live.</em></p><p><em>Tomorrow,</em> he promised himself. He wouldn’t impose on Francis again, not tonight — not when they’d had so many restless nights already; Not when Francis had hardly gotten any rest at all. But tomorrow, he would take his hands anew, and he would ask to share that warmth once more, for however long they had left.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>Find me on <a href="https://www.tumblr.com/dashboard/blog/kahootqueen69">tumblr</a> :)</p></blockquote></div></div>
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